Poe's Death Is Rewritten as Case of Rabies, Not Telltale Alcohol

Published: September 15, 1996

Edgar Allan Poe did not die drunk in a gutter in Baltimore but rather had rabies, a new study suggests.

The researcher, Dr. R. Michael Benitez, a cardiologist who practices a block from Poe's grave, says it is true that the writer was seen in a bar on Lombard Street in October 1849, delirious and possibly wearing somebody else's soiled clothes.

But Poe was not drunk, said Dr. Benitez, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Maryland Medical Center. ''I think Poe is much maligned in that respect,'' he added.

The writer entered Washington College Hospital comatose, Dr. Benitez said, but by the next day was perspiring heavily, hallucinating and shouting at imaginary companions. The next day, he seemed better but could not remember falling ill.

On his fourth day at the hospital, Poe again grew confused and belligerent, then quieted down and died.

That is a classic case of rabies, the doctor said. His study is in the September issue of The Maryland Medical Journal.

In the brief period when he was calm and awake, Poe refused alcohol and could drink water only with great difficulty. Rabies victims frequently exhibit hydrophobia, or fear of water, because it is painful to swallow.

There is no evidence that a rabid animal had bitten Poe. About one-fourth of rabies victims reportedly cannot remember being bitten. After an infection, the symptoms can take up to a year to appear. But when the symptoms do appear, the disease is a swift and brutal killer. Most patients die in a few days.

Poe ''had all the features of encephalitic rabies,'' said Dr. Henry Wilde, who frequently treats rabies at Chulalongkorn University Hospital in Bangkok, Thailand.

Although it has been well established that Poe died in the hospital, legend has it that he succumbed in the gutter, a victim of his debauched ways.

The legend may have been fostered by his doctor, who in later years became a temperance advocate and changed the details to make an object lesson of Poe's death.

The curator of the Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum in Baltimore, Jeff Jerome, said that he had heard dozens of tales but that ''almost everyone who has come forth with a theory has offered no proof.''

Some versions have Poe unconscious under the steps of the Baltimore Museum before being taken to the hospital. Other accounts place him on planks between two barrels outside a tavern on Lombard Street. In most versions, Poe is wearing someone else's clothes, having been robbed of his suit.

Poe almost surely did not die of alcohol poisoning or withdrawal, Mr. Jerome said. The writer was so sensitive to alcohol that a glass of wine would make him violently ill for days. Poe may have had problems with alcohol as a younger man, Mr. Jerome said, but by the time he died at 40 he almost always avoided it.

Dr. Benitez worked on Poe's case as part of a clinical pathologic conference. Doctors are presented with a hypothetical patient and a description of the symptoms and are asked to render a diagnosis.

Dr. Benitez said that at first he did not know that he had been assigned Poe, because his patient was described only as ''E. P., a writer from Richmond.'' But by the time he was scheduled to present his findings a few weeks later, he had figured out the mystery.

''There was a conspicuous lack in this report of things like CT scans and M.R.I.'s,'' the doctor said. ''I started to say to myself, 'This doesn't look like it's from the 1990's.' Then it dawned on me that E. P. was Edgar Poe.''